Jill Vogel, Ethics Attorney?

Jill Vogel is running for Lt. Governor of Virginia. On the campaign trail, she touts her career as an Ethics attorney.
If you’re like me, when you hear the word “Ethics” you think of moral principles, moral values, right vs. wrong. I wonder what Jill Vogel thinks when she uses the word? I wonder because Jill Vogel is stonewalling an investigation into HER ethical — or unethical — behavior.
According to subpoenaed internet records, the cell phone belonging to Jill Vogel’s husband, Alex, has been linked to an attempted character assassination aimed at political competitor Bryce Reeves. That cell phone apparently was used to disburse a marital infidelity rumor about Reeves, which he vehemently denies.
Reeves, a former Army Ranger and narcotics detective, knows how to investigate. Vogel, a political operative, knows how to obfuscate. And that is what she seems to be doing ever since the cell phone records identified Alex Vogel’s cell phone as the originator of the Reeves rumors.
Like countless citizens who long for trustworthy, honest, and ethical political representatives, I have been deeply troubled by the cell phone cloud that hangs over the Vogel-Reeves contest. And so, when I spoke with Jill Vogel following a recent public forum featuring the Lt. Governor candidates, I asked her about the cell phone controversy.

Acknowledging that Vogel consistently highlights her reputation as an “Ethics attorney,” I asked if she would submit her husband’s cell phone to an independent forensics investigator — which Bryce Reeves has offered to fund — so that the speculation about the email rumor could be settled once and for all.
Vogel became visibly agitated at my question. She declared that she and her husband had looked at all the records, and there was “nothing there.” Nothing there? What about the subpoenaed records which traced the email rumor back to her husband’s cell phone, I asked. Her response: “You’ll just have to trust me.”
No, Mrs. Vogel. “You’ll just have to trust me” is not the response of a person confident of her innocence. Someone confident of her innocence would say, “Take the cell phone. Submit it to an independent forensics investigator. Let’s find out who started this malicious rumor. After all, I am an Ethics attorney!”

Catharine Trauernicht fulfilled a 9th grade goal when she went to work on Capitol Hill after graduating from Mount Holyoke College. When she began to confuse millions and billions (that was in the mid-late 1970’s), she left the Hill to enroll in The Wharton School at the U. of PA. After earning her MBA, Trauernicht went to NYC to work in the corporate banking field. Five years later, she devoted herself to full-time motherhood for the next twenty years. She became an entrepreneur 10 years ago, inventing a dog ramp to assist dogs entering and exiting vehicles. Coming full circle back to her passion for politics at a young age, Trauernicht now immerses herself in matters involving political advocacy and voter integrity.

You reveal your lack of knowledge about Reeves. He is both well-spoken and intelligent. He has already served his country well in both the military as an Airborne Ranger in the Infantry, and as a police officer as a Vice and Narcotics Detective. We know from this that he is dedicated to serving the public. He has also run small businesses, so he also knows what makes the economy hum.

When he first ran for office, he defeated a long-term democrat to win the seat, and then won re-election by a huge margin. He had to be doing something right for that to happen.

Reeves has a Masters in Public Administration and has completed the Senior Executives in State and Local Government program at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He has awards from UVA’s Sorensen Political Leaders Program and the Sorensen Candidate Training Program.

He is also the Chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Rehabilitation and Social Services, overseeing social service, corrections, and alcohol beverage regulatory matters. He serves on the Courts of Justice, General Laws, Privileges and Elections, Rules, and Joint Rules Committees.

He also serves as the Co-Chair of the General Assembly’s Military and Veteran’s Caucus and is the Senate representative on the Virginia Military Advisory Council to
the Governor and more.

On top of all that, he is also a member of the Board of Veterans Services, the WWI and WWII Commemoration Commission and Advisory Council, the Small Business Commission, the Subcommittee to Evaluate Tax Preferences, the Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice, the Offender Population Forecast Policy Committee, the advisory board of GOPAC and is the previous Co-Chair of GOPAC’s 2013 Emerging Leaders Summit. That’s no small list of accomplishments, and it isn’t even a complete list – and it doesn’t include the list of awards he’s received either.

We have 3 great candidates. Reeves may not be your first choice – I haven’t even decided which I will vote for. myself. But “a dumpster fire”? That’s garbage. He’s a highly qualified candidate for LG – All 3 of our LG candidates are more than qualified and would be great for the job.

Roger

Bryce may be a great guy.

But his campaign is a disaster and flailing. This is a campaign without a purpose and a message and in the process of searching for one they’ve decided on “Give me your cellphone Jill.”

What metric are you using where his campaign is not a dumpster fire?

He’s losing every metric, money, polls, straw polls, enthusiasm

AnninVA26

Have you seen him lately? I think Reeves is who I will support on june 13. Definitely not Vogel and I considered Davis.However, I saw Reeves at a forum in Goochland last Saturday and he was firm, solid in his beliefs, respectful of the other candidates, and clearly conservative. He’s my guy.

Chad Davis

I agree. Senator Vogel seems like an ideal candidate to be Lt. Governor, and even higher office someday. However, I cannot vote for her for the nomination at this point in time, without a reasonable explanation as to why the source of this Reeves’ affair rumor is pointing back to her husband’s phone.

Mies Rohe

Add this to her other liabilities and you’re right, she’s not a viable candidate.

Ron Wright

Excellent points Cathy.

Connie S.

Jill Vogel’s apparently also not that good with security and technology, what with her having an OPEN e.g. completely unsecured internet WiFi her family shared with their neighbors.

C’mon! Both Jill and Alex Vogel are lawyers and we’re supposed to swallow that they’re THAT stupid and/or naive?! Shades of Hillary’s bathroom server.

AnninVA26

Thank you. If Jill got the nomination, all of this would be used by the democrats against us in our blue Virginia. We can’t take the chance of her taking down the entire ticket. 4 years of Sanders-supported Perriello and 4 years more of Mark Herring? We deserve more. Supporting Glenn Davis would take this scandal out of the headlines. Can you imagine what the RTD will do to her? Let’s not find out.

Mies Rohe

Agreed: She weighs down the ticket. She is the wrong choice if Republicans want to win.

Mies Rohe

Well-written and reasoned, Catharine. An objective, reasonable observer cannot ignore the facts (Google’s subpoena response) pointing clearly to Alex Vogel’s phone as the destination of the verification text for the email account in question (which would not have been created by Google without a response matching the code sent only to Alex Vogel’s cellphone).

Add this: The significant misinformation campaign designed to attack and obscure these facts. It’s almost as revealing as the facts themselves, but the facts stand alone unchallenged. In fact, Google sent the account verification code to Alex Vogel’s cellphone. This fact stands without contradiction.

The remainder, open wifi, etc., is simply icing, and less certain evidence, while nonetheless probative of the determinative question: Who sent the scurrilous email? One thing we do know: The account was created by whomever possessed at that time Alex Vogel’s cellphone.

Cam Jones

Mr. Tom White at VARight has posted his unbiased evaluation of the evidence presented on TBE of the email allegations.

“Mies Rohe” likes to talk about zebras and horses, and apparently has a background in hospital something or other.

Tom White is an Information Technology professional with years of experience.

“Mies Rohe”, is an obvious Reeves supporter who uses the name of a dead German architect, and is responsible for monitoring TBE to bully you into believing there is no other possible side to this story than the one put forth by those here on TBE.

Read what both have written, and you decide who is plausible and who is not, but at least get both opinions.

Before you read what Tom White has said below, here are some facts I would also like you to consider:

1 email was sent to 1 SPECIFIC recipient (Travis Witt, a good friend and supporter of Bryce Reeves), by one unknown email originator. It was not addressed to a group, it was not send to a blind copy (Bcc) of unknown people, it was sent to ONE person by name.

That email was then shopped around to every major news outlet in the Commonwealth by none other than Bryce Reeves to try to threaten his opponent into getting out of the race. If it weren’t for Bryce Reeves taking this to every news outlet in the state, no one save Reeves and Travis Witt would have known anything about it.

I ask you; Is this the action of a man who cares about his wife and family?

Below is Tom White’s evaluation, and this is what Steve Albertson posted on the VA Right site comments regarding Tom’s post:

“Thanks, Tom. This is very helpful. I’ll send you unredacted versions. I don’t believe there has been a phone records subpoena, as neither Vogel has been a party to Reeves’ lawsuit, so as far as I know there is not yet any smoking gun one way or the other re the Google verification SMS.”

I am not supporting any State Senators in the Lt. Governor’s race this year. Neither Jill Vogel nor Bryce Reeves will see my endorsement for two reasons. First, neither has impressed me with their voting records. But the biggest reason by far is the balance of power in the State Senate. Vogel’s seat may be slightly easier to hold in a special election, but Reeves defeated long time Democrat Senator Edd Houck by a hair. And the last thing Virginia Republicans need is to lose the Senate majority. Terry McAuliffe and the Democrats have left the Commonwealth in a much weaker position and we will need both houses and the Governor’s office to restore the state to prosperity.

Right now, only Rep. Glenn Davis is in a position that will not adversely impact the Republican majority in the Legislature.

But if you have not seen the email story, it is in the Washington Post, and on TBE here and here. The second TBE link has several documents included which I have analyzed.

Just as a side note, I am currently an IT manager and have been in the computer and data communications field for over 30 years and have worked on computers for 44 years. I have been a consultant and have done corporate forensics and data restoration of deleted data. I have worked on military encryption gear and have basically spent my entire career in data and computer jobs.

Here is what happened according to the documents that were released.

On 9/22/2016 at 9:57 AM EDT a GMail account was created using the name Martha McDaniel. The email address was staffordforfreedom@gmail.com. The IP address logged was 72.165.xxx.xxx. TBE redacted the IP address in most, but not all places. (They missed one.) Google requires a phone number or other means to verify the user. The phone number they used was 202-669-XXXX – again redacted by TBE. According to TBE, the cell phone number belongs to Jill Vogel’s husband, Alex. And they have a recording of the voice mail message which they claim has been removed that identifies the number as belonging to Alex.

Update – 1/3/17 3:21 PM

Steve Albertson was kind enough to send me the un-redacted documents and, as I expected, the IP addresses do indeed match. So I can verify that the redactions are not relevant to the story.

Problems I have with this:

We can’t verify the phone number because it is redacted and there is no Subpoena Duces Tecum providing records for the cell phone owner. And there is no way to verify the recording as being from the number that has been redacted. Absent some type of phone verification records, I cannot verify that the phone is actually the one tied to the Google account. But I assume they would be able to produce this verified evidence or open themselves up to a suit.

The next event of note was an email sent from this account on September 30, 2016 at 12:49 PM EDT. The IP Address used to log on and send the email was 2.165.xxx.xxx as redacted by TBE. Again, we have no way of knowing the important last two octets of the address.

Another problem with a potential defamation suit is that the email in question does not actually accuse or claim Reeves is having an affair, only that there are rumors.

So what are the un-redacted IP Addresses? TBE redacted a lot of IP addresses in the various documents, but they failed to redact two of the IP addresses. Jill Vogel’s IP address is 162.72.231.134. At the bottom of the page found here just below the redacted IP address that is circled shows the full IP on the bottom line. This is Vogel’s home IP. Or it was from September 19 – September 22 according to the document. And according to the document from Google, the Vogel household accessed the Gmail account 3 times for about 45 seconds total only on September 22, 2016. NOT the day the email was sent.

The account was accessed a total of 6 other times by IP address 72.165.161.144. (If you look at the top of the Century Link response found here you will find the un-redeacted address.) This is the IP address of Vogel’s neighbor who alleges that they operate an unsecured internet WiFi Connection.

So the Gmail account was created on 9/22/2016 from the Vogel neighbor’s internet for a period of about 40 minutes. 4 minutes later, the Google logs show an access from the Vogel’s internet address a total of 3 times for less than a minute altogether. The account was accessed from the neighbor’s account 8 days later on September 30, 2016 at 16:41 UTC which is 12:41 PM EDT. 5 minutes later, the person logged off at 12:46 PM. The email in question was sent at 12:49 PM on September 30, 3 minutes after the account was logged off. But that 3 minute gap is insignificant and most likely accounted for by clock drift. Then on October 1, 2016 the neighbor’s IP address was used to delete the Gmail account.

But what these documents produced so far show is that the Gmail account was not created using Vogel’s internet service. Rather, it was created using a neighbor’s account. And the email was not sent from Vogel’s account, again, it was sent from the neighbor’s account.

Just after the Google account was created using the neighbor’s internet account it was accessed using Vogel’s internet. Not long enough to do anything other than log on and off.

The bottom line is that the account was created on an open WiFi and the email was written on an open WiFi that does not belong to Jill Vogel. The fact that the account was briefly accessed using the Vogel internet service isn’t proof that she was responsible for the email sent 8 days later.

So Reeves will have a hard time proving not only defamation, but he will also have a hard time proving that Vogel even knew anything about it. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence that gives way to a lot of interesting theories, but there is no proof.

I would urge TBE to republish the documents without redacting the IP addresses. Often, internet providers own large blocks of addresses. Class B or even A. The first two sets of digits (octets) are the only ones assigned to the owner of a Class B block. And the last two octets change. Not that I think TBE is playing with the redaction’s, but since they missed completely redacting the numbers, I would like to see the un-redacted copy.

The phone number is understandable. But a Subpoena of the phone records showing a text from Gmail would be helpful.

And again, at this point I do not plan to endorse either Senator, so I am not pulling for or defending anyone here. Just looking at the evidence.

One thing Tom did not address is the possibility of IP spoofing which can easily be done. See this entry on Wikipedia, and note that there are commercial software programs used for testing websites which allow the user to do this easily.

Read them and come to your own conclusions if you can, but at least you will have all the information available, not just what one “Mies Rohe” tells you is fact.

Goengo

Like everyone else, I do not know whether Jill or her husband were responsible for the rumor that began. I do know that I would not turn over my cell phone to be analyzed to anyone for any reason. To do that, one would have to trust everyone involved – not just the company, but every employee and anyone who would have access to my phone. We all have way to much information on our phones to be so cavalier with it – everything from credit card info, personal emails and texts, work emails with sensitive information, personal photos and much more. No matter what the reason, no one gets my phone without a subpoena. Perhaps Vogel feels the same..

Larry Conner

Ethics? People see ethics in different ways. Is it ethical for a man, running for the office of Governor for the Commonwealth of Virginia to go to Texas and sell himself for $1,000 a plate? National Party elites should not be deciding who Virginia’s Governor should be…..to me that’s unethical. But, I’m sure it’s fine with you.

Goengo

You don’t understand that fundraising is a necessary evil in politics? Although I would prefer that out-of-state donations were illegal (and that only those who can vote for a candidate be able to make contributions) the fact is that they are not. If a candidate can make thousands of dollars by going to a dinner, why wouldn’t he?